The Grand Finale
by mholub00
Summary: Anything seems exciting, after the fact. (He's not a hero.) (One-shot)


_The noir hero is a knight in blood caked armor._

_He's dirty and he does his best to deny the fact that he's a hero the whole time._

_~Frank Miller_

Anything seems exciting, after the fact.

People flood the streets, staring bright eyed at the sky, marveling at the fact it's still blue, still there. A man hugs a co-worker and a woman falls to her knees, praying.

He knows that in a minute, an hour maybe, he could be okay. Relieved, even happy. In an hour he thinks he might be able to laugh, look back and feel the experience was life changing and epic, but he can still hear it, all of it. He's stuck with the explosions and the screams in his mind.

He doesn't think much of the car as he walks past it, kicking through the rubble with scuffed boots, except that someone is going to be peeved once the shock wears off. It's a nice truck, slick and black, and underneath the twisted metal and concrete dust, he can see that it was probably new. He kicks he tire, the one that's not flat, and picks up a silver bracelet from the ground, holding it up in the sunlight before pocketing the jewelry to examine later. Someone may be looking for it.

He's about to leave, move on to inspect the next pile of building walls and shattered glass, when he hears a faint cry, just a whimper, and he stops. Turns, staring the door to the car, and his heart rate picks up a little.

Everything goes numb, after the fact.

Or at least that's how it happens in movies. On the television, death seems almost peaceful, once the pain fades to a dull pounding. Once the blood loss is too much.

She knows now that this is a lie, and she wants to laugh at the fact she has no one to tell. This is a revelation of the most amazing kind, one that she could use at some point in her next story, that one she was planning to write when she got home.

She thinks she could call someone, but she can't find any words and her phone is somewhere and her head is spinning and she can't remember if she's regaining consciousness or losing it again, only that it hurts now. It hurts more than it did when the wall and the alien and the steel beams fell on her car in the first place, more than when she looked down at her hands and saw red across the front of her new Transformer's sweatshirt. She was really hoping that she wouldn't ruin this one.

She's about to pass out, she can tell now because everything has started tipping sideways, and she knows it's much more graceful in the movies, when people die, and there's never the sound of a car door being ripped off its hinges in the characters last moments. It's always quiet, so the audience can hear each breath until the very last one.

Anybody can break your heart.

He's trying not to panic as he assesses the damage, but this isn't his strong point. Natasha always deals with the civilians so he can wallow in self-pity and pretend like half of the casualties weren't his fault. He yells for her now, for Natasha, into the comm unit lodged in his ear, and hopes she'll find him quickly, but he's on his own.

The girl is young, looks way too young to be allowed to drive, but everyone looks young to him and his world-weary eyes. She's crushed quite literally into the car, steering wheel twisted around mangled legs, seatbelt choking her throat- she was wearing a seatbelt, and he wants to scream that it's not fair. He moves closer and sees the blood, the hole in her jacket and the red underneath, and the shard of glass that is mocking him in its slow drip of the liquid.

"'m I dead yet?" her head turns just barely in his direction, blonde hair matted dark across the cuts on her neck.

His voice catches in his throat. She sounds lost and hopeless, like a shell without a soul, stuck waiting and waiting to move on. "No. No, sweetheart, you're not."

Next, he knows what he should do, what protocol says to do, but there's not time for a med team. He can see that she's dying, and she's accepted it, and it's a whole new kind of pain that tears through his chest. Sixteen year olds aren't supposed to accept anything.

"I'm going to pull you out, okay? I'm sorry, but it's going to hurt."

She nods, and he pulls at the steering wheel to create space to slide her legs through, and unjams the seatbelt with minor difficulty.

"What's your name, sweetheart?" he asks, lifting her carefully from the wreckage. It's a slow process, but he's not sure she can feel the pain anymore.

She takes a raspy breath, and finally tilts her head to look at him properly, her rescuer. "Josie. Josie…Reid."

"It's nice to meet you Josie. I'm Clint."

Everybody knows that everybody dies.

She's trying to see him for real, and his eyes are grey and deep and he's the kind of man they tell stories about, perfect features and sandy hair. Dust coats his arms and his shirt and he's been fighting, she can tell, fighting the aliens to save the world. Hero of the human race, she will call him, and cast him in every movie she'll never write, hands down.

The pain is subsiding, replaced by a low hum throughout her remaining limbs that have feeling, and she wonders how she would be described from an omnipotent point of view. Tragically broken, maybe, and she almost wants see what her legs look like inside. Powdered bone and jagged shards, she'd like to think. She wishes she had a way to tell her mom she wants to be buried in this sweatshirt, buried like the hero she wishes she was, blood stained and dirt caked, but they'll put her in a dress and clean the wounds and it'll be as perfect as if she'd never been dead at all.

"The Lady Josephine has been pulled from the rubble by Sir Clint. My hero," she mumbles, blinking once as a tear slides down her cheek. Everything is whitening again, and a terrible truth in her heart knows that this is the last time.

She doesn't want to close her eyes. She doesn't want to miss a moment of her final scene.

"I'm sorry, Josie Reid," the savior whispers, and she imagines he's crying too, distraught at her passing. "It's not going to be okay, and I wish I could tell you that it was, but I hate lying."

His voice is starting to fade to a muffle. This happens in movies too- the voices go, and then the flat line comes. She takes a deep breath and everything feels heavy and dead and empty.

"My knight in shining armor." Her hand is trembling, her arm shaking, and she leaves a bloody hand print on his cheek.

Death is but the next great adventure, she thinks, and wishes the fading thud in her chest wasn't drowning out his voice because he sounds like angels and she wants to remember his words. Maybe it is as peaceful as it is in the movies and she ends her scene, losing herself in the depths of the universe.

He's not a hero.

Natasha arrives too late to help him, and he's not even sure he did it properly- is there a proper way to help someone die? He wants to ask, but all he seems to be able to do when she kneels in front of him and takes his shoulder is shake his head, shake his head and hold tight to the small body in his arms.

He says he can't leave her here, not in the middle of a war torn street, and Natasha slips her hand around his forearm and leads him to the nearest make-shift medical center. He thinks he should find her parents, find someone, because no one deserves to be left alone, though she's not really there, but he can't. They have to disappear.

That's just how it goes, she says, just like always, and he nods. He knows he was never here, but he clips a silver bracelet around the wrist of a dead girl anyway.

They have to run off into the sky and leave destruction in their wake.

**A/N: No, I don't own the Doctor Who quote. I'm only borrowing it.**

**Thanks for reading!**


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